| | by admin | | posted on 3rd December 2023 in Quakers in 100 Objects | | views 2874 | |
Mary Dyer (c. 1611 - 1660) was an English Quaker who was hanged in Boston, Massachusetts, for her beliefs.
Dyer and her husband William were married in England in 1633 and were outspoken Puritans. As such they faced persecution and, like many others, decided to travel to the American colonies in search of a new life and religious freedom.
In 1635 they arrived in Boston and joined the church in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Before the couple could settle, however, they were drawn into the religious and political conflict known as the Antinomian Controversy.
The Antinomian Controversy saw the colony's leaders argue with settlers over the religious direction Massachusetts Bay Colony should take. In simple terms, the authorities wished to enforce a strict version of English Puritanism according to their interpretation of the Bible, while many settlers sought greater spiritual freedom.
Mary and William supported Ann Hutchinson, the woman who led the dissenting settlers. As a result they were labelled heretics and forced to leave the colony, helping to establish a new settlement in Rhode Island.
Before departing Boston, Mary's third pregnancy ended in the premature stillbirth of a girl with anencephaly and spina bifida. The birth was briefly kept secret, since in the seventeenth century such physical deformity in a newborn was widely interpreted as a sign of so-called 'monstrous' beliefs.
Six months after the baby was buried, Governor John Winthrop, founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, ordered the exhumation and examination of the child's body in front of a large crowd. He compared it to the devil and presented it as proof of divine judgement on Mary's supposed heresy.
After exile to Rhode Island, Mary and William travelled back to England in 1652 and visited Swarthmoor Hall in Cumbria, where they became Quakers, having met Margaret Fell and possibly George Fox as well.
Five years later, in 1657, the couple returned to Boston despite being banished. Mary was expelled again and the following year Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law stating that Quakers found within its borders could be punished by death.
Undeterred, Mary returned once more to speak out for religious freedom. Refusing to leave the colony alongside two other Quakers, William Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson, all three were sentenced to death.
The executions were set for 27 October 1659. Dyer walked hand in hand with the two men as they were led to the gallows, nothing more than an elm tree fitted with a ladder and rope.
Robinson and Stephenson were hanged, but when it came to Mary's turn a letter of reprieve was handed to the court. The petition, secured by her son, offered to spare her life if she agreed to leave the colony once again.
Mary was taken down and given time to depart. The following day she wrote to the court refusing to accept the reprieve:
“My life is not accepted, neither availeth me, in comparison with the lives and liberty of the Truth and Servants of the living God for which in the Bowels of Love and Meekness I sought you; yet nevertheless with wicked Hands have you put two of them to Death, which makes me to feel that the Mercies of the Wicked is cruelty; I rather chuse to Dye than to live, as from you, as Guilty of their Innocent Blood.”
Mary left for Rhode Island under her own will, but returned to Boston on 21 May 1660. Ten days later she was again brought before the governor. Refusing to repent, she was taken once more to the elm tree gallows. Her last words were:
“Nay, I came to keep bloodguiltiness from you, desireing you to repeal the unrighteous and unjust law made against the innocent servants of the Lord. Nay, man, I am not now to repent.”
Dyer was hanged and buried in an unmarked plot. After her death Humphrey Atherton, a member of the court responsible for the executions, is reputed to have said, “she did hang as a flag for others to take example by”.
A fourth Quaker, William Leddra of Barbados, was later hanged on 14 March 1661 for his religious beliefs.
Outrage over these executions, especially Dyer's, contributed to a softening of anti-Quaker laws across the colonies. Rhode Island's Royal Charter of 1663 formally guaranteed freedom of religion, a principle later adopted in various forms elsewhere.
In memory of the Quaker executions, 27 October, the date of the first two hangings, is now marked as International Religious Freedom Day in recognition of the importance of liberty of conscience.
Today a statue of Mary Dyer stands on Boston Common, near where her life ended. The 1959 bronze sculpture by Quaker artist Sylvia Shaw Judson stands in front of the Massachusetts State House. Copies can also be found in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Richmond, Ohio.
Lincoln Festival of History
(May Bank Holiday)
Local History Festival
(throughout May)
Heritage Open Days
(June–September)